Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) on Thursday announced that several COVID-19 measures, including its mask mandate, will be relaxed from March 1, and the national COVID-19 alert level system will no longer be used.
Instead, Taiwan will adopt a new COVID-19 prevention model that gives greater consideration to economic factors, Health and Welfare Minister Chen Shih-chung (???) said at a press briefing.
Under the new model, the CECC will discard the four-level COVID-19 alert system that it first adopted in January 2021 and instead will adjust Taiwan’s disease prevention measures on a monthly basis when the current Level 2 alert expires on Feb. 28, Chen said.
For the month of March, several disease prevention measures will be relaxed, including a mask mandate, a ban on eating on public transport, a restriction on visiting hospital patients and care home residents, and the COVID-19 testing requirement for travelers to Taiwan’s offshore counties, Chen said.
Rules on masks, eating on public transport
Currently, people are required to wear a mask at all times outside their homes, except when eating, participating in water-related activities, or if they are in a wide outdoor space such as a forest or field.
From March 1, the mask exemption will extend to persons driving alone or with other family members in a private vehicle, exercising indoors or outdoors, or taking individual or group photos indoors or outdoors, according to a CECC statement released Thursday.
People participating in activities such as live streaming, filming, moderating at an event, news reporting, giving a speech, and lecturing will also not be required to wear a mask, the CECC said.
The current ban on eating on trains, intercity buses, ferries, and domestic flights will also be lifted, while the sampling of food at markets will again be allowed, the CECC said.
Visits to hospitals, care facilities
Since January, the CECC has imposed a ban on visits to hospital patients and long-term care facility residents, except under special circumstances and with the approval of those institutions.
Beginning March 1, the ban on hospital visits will be partially lifted across the country, and visits to care home residents will be unrestricted, except in Taipei, New Taipei, Taoyuan, and Kaohsiung cities, the CECC said.
Visits to hospital patients and care home residents in those four cities will still be restricted to special circumstances and will require the approval of the institutions, it said.
In the rest of the country, the new regulations will allow visits to hospital patients in intensive care units and those on hospice, respiratory care, psychiatric, children’s, and long-term care wards, the CECC said.
The number of visitors will be limited to two per patient at the same time in hospitals, and three in care facilities, the CECC said.
The current COVID-19 test requirements for visitors to those institutions will be dropped, if the visitor has received three doses of a vaccine against the disease, with the third shot administered at least two weeks before the visit, the CECC said. Visitors who have recovered from a COVID-19 infection in the three months prior to the visit will also be exempt from the COVID-19 test, it added.
All other visitors to a hospital patient or care facility resident will still be required to present a negative COVID-19 test — either polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test or rapid antigen — taken within three days of the visit, the CECC said.
Testing of travelers to offshore counties
Meanwhile, effective March 1, travelers to Taiwan’s offshore counties will no longer be required to take a COVID-19 rapid test, as the domestic COVID-19 situation has stabilized, the CECC said.
In the period Jan. 29 to Feb. 23, some 3,103 people traveled from Taiwan’s main island to its offshore counties, and 906 of them were tested under the current regulations, the CECC said, adding that all of those tests were negative.
The testing rule was implemented on Jan. 29, mandating that travelers who had developed COVID-19 symptoms in the 14-day period before their flight from Taiwan proper to its outlying islands must be tested before their departure.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel